The Elephant In the Room Exposed: Deep Rooted Conservative Bias In the Media

Deep-rooted conservative bias in the media is revealed in not only in what they report, but also by what they fail to report.

CNN reporters are embedded with the ultra-right wing Tea Party while reporting on the group’s events around the country on the Tea Party Express bus tour. Who is embedded with the PCCC? Or even with the Republicans or Democrats for that matter?

The real story is how a network like CNN can still be considered a news organization when its “reporters” were riding around on the Tea Party bus that also has the “CNN” logo emblazoned on the side. Now CNN is doubling down on its gambit by sponsoring a Republican Presidential primary “debate” with the Tea Party. Not one mainstream media outlet has dared investigate, much less report on, this conflation of corporate money, lobbying groups, and right wing extremism known as the Tea Party. The failure to make any effort to unravel this is evidence of a conservative bias by what they have failed to report.

President Obama’s State of the Union address had not one, but two Republican rebuttals. Not even FOX , the conservative media arm of the Republican party, would run the second rebuttal by fringe conservative Michelle Bachmann. (Recall Michelle Bachmann warned us that the census is an example of government overreach.) Then a remarkable about-face occurred, and the story about the two Republican rebuttals was the headline run by all the networks, overshadowing the actual State of the Union address by the President.

All of the supposedly unbiased mainstream media networks cover ultra-conservative Sarah Palin continuously. The instant she opens her mouth she gets wall-to-wall coverage on whatever Obama-bashing nonsense she makes up. Do the networks with their legions of “reporters” fact check any of this? Did the mainstream media ever bother to report that “death panels” were not actually real?

And now Donald Trump joins the ranks of birthers like Orly Tates. The fact that we even know what the term “birther” means is testament to the ridiculous amount of coverage that right wing conspiracy theories get. What is the real story here? The real story is why the mainstream media did not expose the birther nonsense for what it is, put it to rest, and move on to actual news.

Actual news – like the national campaign of voter suppression being carried out at the state level – is completely ignored by the mainstream media. Voter suppression and disenfranchisement is being made law in states from Maine, to Ohio, to New Mexico, that targets the young, old, poor, and minority groups – but it doesn’t make the mainstream media news.

Is it only a coincidence that Republicans are leading these state efforts, while the groups targeted by the legislation tend to vote more for Democrats? The real story is that attempts in 22 states to suppress voting is itself being suppressed by a conservative bias in the mainstream media.

Maybe the mainstream media wants to carefully investigate stories before it releases them into the news. Maybe… Consider the complete opposite stance taken by the media when the story is not about conservatives. Complete fabrications about ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, National Public Radio, and Planned Parenthood – these made-up stories are instantly thrust upon the media-viewing public by eager networks. Each successive fraudulent video did not, however, make the mainstream media more careful the next time. It seems to have instead exposed the media as part of the fraud since these fraudulent videos kept coming from the same sources! The singular exception was the latest Anthony Weiner scandal which turned out to be true. In this case, the media tried, convicted, and sentenced Weiner in the mainstream media. The media showed great persistence in keeping the pressure on the outspoken Democrat, in sharp contrast to those who brought up conservative Republican Senator David Vitter’s illegal sex scandal which received little scrutiny and no calls for his resignation were reported. The message is clear: If it promotes conservative talking points, it gets the “mainstream media” headline.

Whether the mainstream media does it for ratings, or for political activism of its corporate owners doesn’t matter – the end result is a deep-rooted conservative bias in what is seen by the media consumers in America.